Barack Obama defends ObamaCare in defiant Boston speech

US president admits "early problems" but launches passionate defence of
healthcare scheme

President Barack Obama offered a defiant defence of his healthcare reforms today, making light of the problems plaguing the Obamacare website and challenging criticism that the law would force people off their existing insurance plans.

Hours after his health secretary admitted that the roll out of Obamacare had been a "debacle", the president travelled to Boston to make an aggressive pitch for his reforms.

Mr Obama invoked Massachusetts's experiment with near-universal healthcare, passed by his former election rival Mitt Romney, saying he was confident that his plan would work "because Massachusetts has shown that the model works".

"Health care reform in this state was a success," Mr Obama said, but added that just like the national version there were "early problems to solve".

"All the parade of horribles, the worst predictions about healthcare reform in Massachusetts never came true," he said.

Like the federal plan, Massachusetts's law centres around an individual mandate or a tax penalty for those who do not sign up for coverage and subsidies for those cannot afford it.

While early enrollment was slow Massachusetts now has the highest rate of health insurance in the US, although it also suffers from high healthcare costs.

In a rare public statement, Mr Romney rejected Mr Obama's comparisons, saying that "a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country".

Mr Obama confronted his own parade of horribles later in the speech, beginning with the technical glitches that have left Healthcare.gov still struggling a month after its October 1 launch.

Although Mr Obama said there was "no excuse" for the site's flaws he proceeded to repeatedly joke about it, saying that even those who successfully signed up for coverage online only succeeded after "multiple tries".

Mr Obama was then forced to face up to his own repeated promise that the law would not affect those satisfied with their private coverage and "if you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan".

In reality many existing plans do not meet the new requirements laid out by the Affordable Care Act, forcing insurance companies to drop them and offer up new alternatives.

The president offered a semi-acknowledgement that his claim was inaccurate, saying that "substandard plans" would now be replaced with "quality, comprehensive coverage".

But he insisted it was "grossly misleading" to say that Americans were being forced off of their coverage.

"Most people are going to be able to get better, comprehensive health care plans for the same price or even cheaper than projected. You're going to get a better deal," he said.

In a line likely to be seized upon by conservatives, Mr Obama said people whose old policies were cancelled should "just shop around in the new marketplace. That's what it's for."

He then turned his fire on Republicans who he accused of being "so locked into the politics of this thing that they won't lift a finger to help their own people".

"Anyone defending the remnants of the old broken system as if it was working for people, anyone who thinks we shouldn't finish the job of making the healthcare system work for everybody...Those folks should have to explain themselves," he said.

Earlier in the day, Katherine Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, apologised for the problems with healthcare.gov.

"Hold me accountable for the debacle. I'm responsible," she told a Congressional committee.